Eventual hobby update

Somehow we've already made it to October, and my previous post was in July. Two whole months with no posts at all. Oh well, I guess my priorities lay elsewhere.

I might have been silent for the entirety of August and September, but I haven't been completely idle on the hobby front. I did allow my attentions to wander from the slow grow Dwarfs, though. I sort of shifted a bit to paint some stuff to help us get back on track with the Gob-Off campaign. We've actually just played the next stage of it, but I still need to get the report together. In the meantime, this is what I've managed to paint...

21 forest goblin archers, ready to take the field

The Gob-Off: Chapter 3 - Part 2

This is the continuation of the report of the 3rd game in our goblin campaign. You can find the first half here.

When we left our heroes, matters were coming to a head in the centre of the field. If you recall, things looked like this...

 3 units locked in combat, including 5 characters, with units all around...

Cancon 2020 Aftermath - Part 5

This is a continuation of my report of the recent Clash of Kings Australia tournament at Cancon 2020. You can find the previous part here, or go right back to the start with the first part here.

Game 5 - Push
Angriartists - Goblins

• Troll Horde
• Troll Horde
• Troll Horde
• Troop of Mincer Mob
• Troop of Mincer Mob
• Troop of Mincer Mob
• Troop of Mincer Mob
• Troop of Mincer Mob
• Troop of Mincer Mob
• King on Chariot with Piercing Arrow
• King with Jareth's Pendant (gives him a Headstrong aura)
• Mincer
• Mincer
• War Trombone

OK, so... This list confused me a lot. I admit I had never really read up on what a Goblin Mincer did, and now I was paying the price. I stole my opponent's army list so that I could make sure I understood what I was up against during deployment. Aris explained the general concept of the list as the Mincers being the anvil, and the Trolls the hammer. That made sense. The Mincers are not quick, but they're Defence 6+ from the front. Of course, if they got a clean charge on you, you might know about that too...

What the hell am I looking at? I immediately had guilt about the pile of unpainted pump wagons at home.

The Gob-off Interlude 2 - Mork save us!

The holiday period and Cancon preparations have kind of put our Gob-off on hold, but here is a bit of an explanation of what happened to Mush and Room after our last game...

Mush drifted. He didn't know for how long. He felt nothing. He could see nothing. And yet, somehow, everything felt kind of... green.

The Gob-off: Interlude

While I busily try to get stuff painted and we work out when the next game in our Goblin campaign (you can find part 1 here) will take place...

Skuzzbutt stalked back and forth in the living room of the broken down building that served as his headquarters. Around him sat his lieutenants, perched on whatever broken furniture they could find. The shaman Ballitch squatted in the corner, gibbering to himself as he often did. Skuzzbutt tried to ignore him and focus on the problem at hand.

"Da problem is da squigs," he told the room yet again. "Dey is dead chompy."

The assembled goblins obligingly muttered their agreement again. Razzie, who was wrapped almost head to toe in dirty rags that served as makeshift bandages, shifted uncomfortably at the memory of just how chompy the squigs had been.

"Wot iz we gonna do?" wailed Idjit, not for the first time. An odd, rather pathetic little goblin, Idjit was not the most clever of the assembled group. Nor was he much of a fighter. But he seemed to be uncommonly lucky, and had by sheer longevity managed to make it into Skuzzbutt's inner council. Not that he added much, now that he was there.

"We needz spears. Long pointy ones!" proclaimed Skuzzbutt. "We need to be able to stick dem squigs before dey get close enough to give us da chomp!"

There was some murmuring of agreement at the obvious wisdom of this plan, and Skuzzbutt was filled with pride at his own cleverness. His military genius was unmatched, and their victory would be assured...

This glorious train of thought was derailed by Idjit, who had a slightly perplexed expression. "Errr, boss..."

Skuzzbutt rounded on him, annoyed at the interruption. "Wot, Idjit?" The already small goblin seemed to sink even further down on his broken stool under the weight of his boss' displeasure. He spoke hesitantly.

"Dem spears, boss. I don't fink it will work."

"Why not? Iz simple fizziks. We reach dem before dey reach us," snapped Skuzzbutt. He shouldn't have been surprised that Idjit would be the one that failed to grasp his plan, but it was nevertheless frustrating. He was always annoying.

"Well yer, boss. Nah boss. Da problem is inishutive, boss," the little goblin whined. "Dey chomp before we can stabs dem."

Skuzzbutt stared at him for a moment. What was he gibbering about? It was obvious he didn't understand the simple plan. The reach of a spear far exceeded the bite of a squig. He glanced about the room, and could see that nobody else had a clue what Idjit was on about either. Ballitch hiccupped, and toppled over in his little corner. Idjit continued to look concerned, but flinched as though he was about to be struck every time Skuzzbutt glared his way. The impudent little runt. There was no point explaining it to him again.

"Shaddup Idjit," he snapped. "I want youz all to go make some long pointy spears so da ladz can practice. Now!"

*****

"Squigs," muttered Mush as he and his brother staggered back toward the camp. "We needz more squigs!"

"Yer," nodded Room agreeably as he limped alongside, using his shattered banner pole as a walking stick. "But where do we find more squigs? Most of 'em got stabbed by dem uvver gobbos."

"Dat's easy," snorted Mush. "We steal 'em from da Weird Toof tribe. Dey gotz heaps of 'em"

"Yer," agreed Room again. "But... dey live deep unnerground innit? How we gonna get 'em?"

Mush looked at him like he was an idiot. "We attack 'em in da cave where dey live, dummy."

Room looked uneasy. "But... itz real dark down der," he whined. "An itz full o squigs!"

Mush turned and whacked his brother over the ear, making him cower and take a couple of steps away to safety. "Dark!" shouted Mush incredulously. "What sort of night goblin iz you? Dark is home!" He gestured around at the surrounding trees, their shadows lengthening as the sun's last light crept away. "Out here under dat 'uge sky! Dis is da scary place!"

Room glanced around, sniffing. "I kinda like it out here," he muttered defensively. 

Mush stared at him for a moment, blinked hard as though he was seeing his brother for the first time, then turned and stormed off on the path toward camp. "Lez go get dem squigs!"


You can find the next part of the campaign here...

Another wave of reinforcements

My Orcs and Goblins are getting a lot of love at the moment. Actually it's mainly the goblins, but that's OK. They needed more work to begin with. Recently I posted about my incredible good fortune in having a pile of very presentable greenskins practically land in my lap, and now we have this stuff. Actually, this stuff was ordered before the second-hand stuff had entered the picture. So I bought this before that, but there was travel time in involved, so... the arrival of this stuff is the latest development.

I present to you the first models I have ever bought with Age of Sigmar on the packaging...

3 boxes of Squig Herds, 2 of Squig Hoppers, 2 of "Troggoths" (trolls), a big fat Troll to use as a themed giant, and something called Mollog's Mob.

Skarsnik and Kemmler

I mentioned in my previous post that Tim and I were inspired to play a game of Warhammer recently, which led to my painting those heroes on big squigs. Well, this was the game. Such as it was... At least I got photos!

Skarsnik's Horde
Tim's highly questionable list was built around the simple concept of whatever I had available that didn't include Orcs, for the sake of glorious Goblin purity. He was limited a bit as some of my more useful elements like Goblin Chariots are in a terrible state of disrepair.

• Skarsnik and Gobbla
• Goblin Warboss on Gigantic Spider with Armour of Endurance, Basha's Axe of Stunty Bashing, Shield
• Night Goblin Great Shaman (Level 4) with Dispel Scroll
• Night Goblin Big Boss with Battle Standard, 5+ Ward, Great Weapon
• Night Goblin Big Boss on Great Cave Squig with Spear
• Night Goblin Big Boss on Great Cave Squig with Great Weapon
• 40 Night Goblins with Spears, Command, Netters, 3 Fanatics
• 40 Night Goblins with Spears, Command, Netters, 3 Fanatics
• 40 Night Goblins with Short Bows
• 20 Night Goblins with Short Bows
• 10 Goblin Wolf Riders with Command, Spears, Shields, Short Bows
• 10 Goblin Wolf Riders with Command, Spears, Shields, Short Bows
• Squig Herd with 12 Squigs, 6 Herders
• 6 Trolls
• 8 Squig Hoppers
• Mangler Squig
• Mangler Squig
• Arachnarok
• Rock Lobber
• Doom Diver

Kemmler's Legions
I didn't even make my list. Pete made it for me, with the basic instruction of making a weak Vampire Counts list, as I assumed the Goblin list wouldn't be particularly potent. Especially given I was busy at the painting table, painting up a pair of squig heroes. This is what Pete came up with.

• Heinrich Kemmler
• Krell
• Necromancer (Level 2, Lore of Vampires)
• Wight King with Battle Standard, Armour of Endurance, Great Weapon
• 40 Ghouls with Ghast
• 30 Skeletons with Command
• 20 Zombies with Standard, Musician
• 20 Zombies with Standard, Musician
• 5 Dire Wolves
• 2 Bat Swarms
• 10 Black Knights with Command, Heavy Armour, Barding, Shields, Lances
• 20 Grave Guard with Command, Great Weapons
• 20 Grave Guard with Command
• Black Coach
• 5 Blood Knights

Seems reasonable, right? No vampires, not a lot in the way of fancy toys, and several things where Pete would normally look at them and say "that's terrible" made it in (like the Black Coach)...

We rolled up Watchtower, and decided that would do as well as anything in terms of a scenario. Skarsnik rolled to delay all my units with his sneaky traps, but only managed to snare the Blood Knights. Given how many rolls Tim had made, I got off very lightly. Tim "won" control of the Watchtower, meaning he really lost the first turn...

Deployment. Tim suffered here, due a combination of inexperience with the nonsense of Goblin deployment, and our forgetting the exact order of declaring charges, moving chargers and compulsory movement (that's the correct order. We were using the 7th ed rules where compulsories went in between declaration and movement of chargers). Hey, we're rusty.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder, right?

Hello again! Long time, no post. Things have been rather quiet on the blogging front, which I of course feel guilty about, as usual. But these longer gaps seem to have become the norm recently, for better or worse.

The gaps largely relate to me not having done a lot of hobby-related activities in recent weeks. I tried to generate some painting momentum by proclaiming the Year of the Goblin, however after doing pretty well with the first horde of Night Goblins, I kind of ran out of steam. It was partly the Goblins' fault, of course. Night Goblins might be simple to paint, but they're not terribly exciting. 

As it was, I tried to encourage myself by shifting across to painting a couple of characters. I painted these 2 guys shortly after the Night Goblins, however they did little to improve my level of hobby energy, and my momentum stalled. 

A couple of ugly little retro twins who need a hanky. Was too lazy to take a proper photo in the light box, sorry...

Rather than trying to force myself back onto the painting wagon, I decided instead to let myself focus on less demanding things (ie: PC games). This was partly driven by the arrival of a Kickstarter project I backed some time ago, Battletech. I was pretty excited by this, and set about playing my way through the campaign. The game is not without its occasional flaws, but overall I really enjoyed playing through the story.

Turn-based mech combat. Basically it's what it says on the box - the Battletech tabletop game in PC form.

A Dark-Robed Horde

It's been a while since my previous post, but I've finally completed the full unit of Night Goblins. After the initial large multi-model filler, I painted the remainder in 3 batches. It all seemed pretty manageable, but that still didn't mean I got through it all quickly. Oh well, at least I did get there in the end.

40 Night Goblins, ready for battle. Or you know, ready to squabble a bit and then run away.

A Base Full of Gobbos

I declared in my previous post that I thought I could get my Night Goblin Archer unit filler finished by the end of the week. Turns out that was true, although I didn't quite manage to get photos taken and posted in that same time-frame. Anyway, here they are:

A 5x4 unit filler of Night Goblin Archers, all based and ready to go.

2018 - Year of the Goblin

Way back when this blog was born in 2011, I decided that I was going to focus my painting efforts on a particular army. I proclaimed 2011 would be my Year of the Empire, and set about making as much painting progress on my Empire army as I could. In total I painted something like 5000 points over the course of that year, and it formed the foundation of the army which would continue to grow in the years that followed. 

There is no doubt that over the last several years, my Empire have received an inordinate amount of attention compared to my other armies. There have been brief bursts of focus on things like my Dwarfs and Ogres, however I have never focused on another army pretty much exclusively for any real amount of time. I think it might be time to address that.

I have spoken previously of my intention to try to recreate the Battle at the East Gate of Karak Eight Peaks. This is still on the cards, however it is really still in the early planning stage. One of the things that is holding back progress is the state of my Orc and Goblin army. I do have a painted army of greenskins; I think it totals something like 8000 points. However, a lot of it was painted in a hurry for tournaments around 15 years ago, and is really pretty rough. I have gone back and revitalised a couple of elements, and some of the larger models like Wyverns and Arachnaroks were added more recently and therefore hold up better. But the army lacks a lot of stuff, in particular Goblins. Sure, there are Goblins there, but not in the sort of numbers that would be required for a game like Karak Eight Peaks.

I've been trying to make myself knuckle down and focus on the problem for a few months now, however I have barely made any progress. I have not yet built up any momentum, which is key for larger hobby projects like this. In an effort to address this, I have decided to proclaim 2018 the Year of the Goblin.

OK, so technically Skarsnik got painted last year. But he's just ahead of the curve. Leading from the front!

Cancon 2018 Aftermath - Part 1

Cancon is done and dusted for another year, and I survived once again. Honestly survival was one of my key motivators this year - the conditions were pretty oppressive at times in terms of heat and humidity, and despite spending the first day of the convention just wandering around and talking to people, I was exhausted. So I was really worried about how I'd hold up over the next 2 days when I'd also be playing 7 games of Kings of War. Suffice to say I decided I'd be happy with being able to walk out the door at the finish, so I was determined not to exhaust myself over-thinking my games.

As I mentioned previously, I decided to take Elves to the tournament. I had basically never used them before (I did once when the 2nd edition rules were still in beta), and I hadn't played any other games of KoW in a year either. So I was going to be a bit rusty, even if I did want to be competitive. This also contributed to my "take it easy" philosophy. I was there to blow off the cobwebs, play a few games, meet some people, and generally make up the numbers...

This was my army list:

• The Green Lady with 1 Sabre-Toothed Pussycat
• Tree Herder
• Drakon Rider Lord
• Elven Mage with Fireball, Bane Chant
• Horde of Therennian Sea Guard with Chant of Hate
• Regiment of Palace Guard
• Regiment of Stormwind Cavalry with Potion of the Caterpillar
• Green Lady's Wild Guard (Regiment of fancy Hunters of the Wild)
• Horde of Forest Shamblers
• Bolt Thrower
• Bolt Thrower

I had intended to try to paint up a new regiment of Stormwind Cavalry for the event, but ended up being extremely busy in the lead-up and it soon became apparent it wasn't going to happen. I didn't even really finish the Green Lady, but she was usable enough.

Anyway, this is how things went on the day...

Game 1: Scavenge

Tony Winmill, Goblins

Tony was very nice and helpful, happy to explain how the scenario worked and also what this "Blood boil" spell was that he was carrying on his 3 wizards. It was quickly becoming apparent to me that my lack of practice would be exacerbated by my lack of familiarity with the Clash of Kings rules. Oh well, what was the worst that could happen?

The first game was always going to be rough. I had never deployed this army before, and had to try to remember rules and other inconvenient things...